


He Said My Name

by greeneyes_softsighs



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, First Kiss, M/M, POV Alternating, POV First Person, Pining, Second Kiss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:22:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28845267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greeneyes_softsighs/pseuds/greeneyes_softsighs
Summary: Four times Koutarou said my name, and then one time he didn’t.- - -A look at the way a relationship changes over time. POV will alternate between Kuroo and Bokuto for each chapter.
Relationships: Bokuto Koutarou/Kuroo Tetsurou
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	He Said My Name

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to @cachedoesart and @pinkstarpirate on twitter for being patient betas! I love you!

I wasn’t anticipating having the courage to kiss him so soon. The whole weekend I’d thought about it, imagined it, and duly recognized the terrible idea that it was, but in the end it had happened and, surprisingly, it was still happening.

I had my eyes screwed shut, and the cold concrete of the stairs bit into my palms as I leaned in to his mouth. First contact was awkward. He was mid-sentence and, naturally, his mouth was open while mine puckered ridiculously like a fish. We slotted together in a terribly unromantic way as his bottom teeth bumped into my chin and my hair tickled his nose, but then something happened and we started to make sense of each other. He and I unconsciously worked out a rhythm that came as easy as the beat of a heart, or the inhale and exhale of a breath. I was tripping forward continuously, right into him, and he would catch me and it would start all over again as I fell, fell and fell, and I suppose he was falling into me, too. 

We fell and caught each other like that, miraculously avoiding catastrophe for what was probably hours before, breathlessly, I regained my balance and opened my eyes.

Koutarou stared at me, wide-eyed, mouth parted and panting out shallow breaths. I noticed my expression mirrored his and snapped my mouth shut, then looked away, swept up in the inevitable surge of teenage angst as we lapsed into uneasy silence. I lifted my knees and curled around them, hiding my burning face from his scrutiny.

He definitely hated me now. 

He would say something if he didn’t hate me.

Why wasn’t he saying anything!

“Tetsu—”

“Kou—”

We rammed into each other verbally and I winced at the ensuing awkward pause. Like, I actually winced and was still surprised when Koutarou asked, managing to sound genuine despite his very obvious growing hatred for me and my unsolicited kiss, “Are you okay?”

“Ch’yeah,” I laughed breathlessly into my knees, attempting to save face by sounding like a complete dickhead. “Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“I dunno. You... kissed me,” Koutarou said, pausing for effect or maybe out of confusion. I glanced over at him from under my hair just in time to see blunt fingers, with stubby but well-kept fingernails, graze his own lips. Something dangerously buoyant swelled up in my chest, crushing my heart into my ribs and squeezing the air out of my lungs, and I was reminded of all the reasons that had brought me here to this stairwell and next to this boy. 

The weeks leading up to second-year training camp had been agony for me because every waking moment was seized with the frenzied compulsion to plot ways for me to get him alone for a quiet conversation. Inevitably, the idea of just a conversation had quickly escalated into a kiss and, on one particularly fraught night, I shamefully indulged in fantasizing other more complex and intimate concepts, but soon realized I was getting ahead of myself and scaled back my operation drastically. I both wanted and needed something more to happen, or my body was going turn itself inside out from thinking of him. 

So, it’s not like I’d just decided to cause myself this much pain on a whim. It was a year in the making.

\- - -

We’d met at the same training camp in our first year. We both sucked. Admittedly, he might have sucked a little less than me, but I could still block some of his spikes so at the time I fancied us on a level playing field. When our teams were on the court I clocked him, trying my best to always get in his way, reaching out for his powerful hits. I craved just a piece of his life force, needing it transferred to me through my stinging palms after a solid block. Even a whisper of it against my fingertips was enough to carry me through the game. I wanted his attention (his frustration, his exhausted grunts, his triumphant hoots) aimed at me. I would probably take one of his hits with my face if it got me even a taste of that blazing coronal energy.

He had an undeniable star-like quality that dazzled the coaches and students alike — even the upperclassmen didn’t mind him — and just like a star he pulled everyone to him with his immense presence. It was clear he was meant for greater things than high school volleyball and I hated his guts because he knew it. 

By comparison I’m nothing special, but it’s not like I try to stand out of the crowd. I’m content playing volleyball and being regular, just like ninety percent of the school, because generally when people deviate from the norm they’re singled out and beaten down until all the regular people are satisfied with the return of the status quo. No one had the heart to beat down Bokuto. Something about him just drove you. For him it was always forward, farther, better, up, up, up! It was exhausting and exhilarating, and it didn’t take long for me to realize my utter disdain for him as a person had transmuted into something like admiration by the end of the weekend.

“Hey, owl-hair! Nice spikes. Too bad none of them could get past the net.” I settled for taunting him from the parking lot. Fukurodani was filing into their bus for the trip back to their dorms, and I had sprinted across the asphalt after realizing this was my last chance to get his number. He cocked his head, then laughed, and I laughed with him because I was desperate to be his friend and I wanted him to like me.

“Next time I’ll be raining down so many spikes you won’t know what to do with yourself!” He said, flailing his right arm while mangling his mouth around sounds resembling a gatling gun salvo. A spray of saliva dotted my cheek and I hesitated a moment before wiping it away like a normal person with a note of disgust and more laughter. He calmed, sheepishly apologizing while he pulled out his phone. “Let’s trade emails. I need a good mid-blocker to practice with... what was your name, again?”

“Kuroo—” I reeled as he typed my name into his phone. The casual, off-hand praise of my blocking echoed into eternity. He passed me the phone to plug in my email and I stiffly pecked out the letters while thoughts of the warmth of his pocket, where this phone would return when our conversation ended, swarmed me. I was already thinking of the non-existent good times we would have during our non-existent friendship. There were so many funny videos I could send him. I gave back the device considerably more sweaty than before, he shouted a good-bye, and we ran back to our respective teams. 

I didn’t hear from him again until weeks later at the spring interhigh qualifiers.

By then the raging lunacy that propelled me into fantasies of being super-bro BFFs had settled to a more manageable cycle of wishful thinking and bitter disappointment. I stubbornly dragged Kenma into my obsession for the first week, but my increasingly convoluted strategies to befriend the idiot spiker overwhelmed him, and in the end I suffered through my frothing madness alone.

After two weeks without a message I was forced to reassess my expectations and, once the fifth week without a word passed, on the best days I was able to completely forget he existed. Then the qualifiers rolled around. I would have to see Bokuto again, and play against his team. The possibility of a loss to Fukurodani didn’t bum me out as much as it should have, which pissed me off. I wanted to be mad at him, and I wanted that anger to fuel the competition between us, but if getting the internet’s version of the cold shoulder hadn’t completely squashed my fascination with his brilliance, I should have known that simply being in the same room was enough to return me to his thrall.

“Kuroo!! Hey! There you are!” 

I froze in place as a heavy hand beat out a hollow _thump_ from the middle of my back. He materialized at my side just outside the gym, with his duffel bag over his shoulder, wide eyes and a wide grin so bright they swallowed the murky shadow of my annoyance. He was loud, and so familiar with me, it was like he’d time-traveled straight from the parking lot of joint practice to this moment. Our conversation now just a continuation from then. 

“Here I am,” I replied, hoping I sounded cool and sardonic. Bokuto pulled me into a bone-crushing hug and vibrated my entire being with his laughter. All the details of myself melted away in his presence like an overexposed photograph. I felt washed out and empty once he stepped away. Lacking.

“I’m sorry I didn’t send you a message. I got carried away with training for the qualifiers!” It was the first thing out of his mouth. His candor instantly vaporized weeks of my fretting. 

I huffed, rolled my eyes, and pulled out my phone to hand to him. I was very proud of how cool I came off as he took it without a word and tapped his email into my contacts.

“Glad to hear you haven’t been slacking off,” I said, and his head whipped up. Those yellow eyes pinned me in place, reminding me just how amazing it was to get a taste of that undivided attention.

“I’m no slacker!! Make sure to win all your games so I can enjoy beating you later!” He boomed and eyed me with a competitive smirk while stretching out an arm to hand me my phone. I latched onto the bait, and my phone, and never looked back.

“Just give me the chance and I’ll stuff every last one of your spikes.” 

\- - -

Back in the stairwell, Koutarou was uncharacteristically quiet and I was at a loss. I had planned up to this point, but after the kiss the focus went fuzzy. You can never really plan for something that includes a reaction from Koutarou. Instead, I borrowed his words.

“Are _you_ okay?” I asked and unfurled myself across the steps. He hadn’t bolted which I took as a good sign. Not that Koutarou was the type to run away from anything, but there had to be a limit to his boldness, and I imagined it could possibly be the ruin of a friendship by way of a spontaneous kiss. He turned and looked me in the eye. I held my breath.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” His brow furrowed. My lungs burned.

“I dunno. Because I kissed you?” I mumbled the last half of the sentence into a garbled puberty-stricken squeak, and a laugh bubbled up out of me when I released my breath and finally inhaled. I was being a fool. Koutarou laughed with me and his warm chuckles mellowed out the anxious hiss of my snickers.

“Don’t act so depressed! It wasn’t that bad,” he bumped my shoulder with his and smiled. My head drooped heavily, but instead of hanging it between my knees I let myself topple over onto him. An arm around my waist steadied me against his side.

“What? As if you’ve kissed someone before and would know the difference...”

“I mean...” he trailed off and I scoffed. “Maybe a couple people. A couple times. I’m popular at school.” He said it as a fact because it was, but I was still inexplicably embarrassed by my assumption that I would be his first kiss, or that it would even surprise him to be kissed by me. Or anyone. He was touted as a volleyball prodigy and if I could see the blazing upward trajectory of his success, then anyone else with two eyes could as well. Maybe there was solace to be found in the knowledge that I wasn’t the only person desperate to stand in Koutarou’s shadow, and that the only reason he’d kissed other people first was just a matter of day-to-day proximity. Still, I insisted on torturing myself by prompting him for more information.

“So... I’m not your first?”

“No, but the other kisses were the lame type. Nothing ever came from it,” he shrugged and my head bobbed up and down with his shoulder. His answer was both satisfying and depressing. I wondered who those poor mooks were, and how their kisses had been relegated to ‘lame’ status by Koutarou. He very rarely talked down about anyone or anything.

There was a beat of silence before he asked me, “Does that mean I’m your first, then?”

“Well, yeah,” I muttered, covering my eyes with my palm as he belted out another laugh. I had to sit up to protect my skull from his full-body shaking guffaws, but the arm around my waist anchored me close to his side. His hand tensed and he looked at me, cracked open wide and bright, laughter fading into the dimples on his cheeks.

“Can I be your second, too?” He asked with way more finesse than I thought he was capable. But that was Koutarou, always surprising, always radiant. I wet my lips and nodded.

This time when I fell, it was a calculated distance. I knew Koutarou was there to catch me. He held me for a moment in the cradle of his lips before opening up and letting me fall again, this time into him, drinking me up while I dripped slowly into his warm mouth. There was intensity even in his tenderness, a deliberate pliability of his tongue and the meter of his breaths. When we parted he licked me off his lips with a satisfied sigh and I remained clinging to him, skin buzzing. He left white noise behind in the spaces he’d been. 

I wasn’t prepared for the strange solemnity of the moment after. I had done what I came to do, namely kiss Koutarou, and it had gone well. Really well, actually. We’d started something that could branch off in so many ways, but my brain was too preoccupied with getting more in the moment that the overwhelming now-whats looming in the future were kept at bay simply by the smell of his sweat and the warmth of him where we met.

Needing to avoid those future doubts for as long as possible, to be here now with Koutarou, I opted to lean forward once more. I pressed my nose and lips against the soft skin of his neck, just under his ear, and he tensed. His pulse throbbed against my teeth. A noise, something halting but positive, emboldened me. I nosed into his hair, then found the shell of his ear with my lips and kissed it. Another noise, a gasp of air through flared nostrils, and I was willing to flick out my tongue and trace the curve of it down to the soft lobe.

My name eked out of his mouth first as a hiss, and then round and full and cupped in the swell of his pleasure. Each syllable slid down my spine and radiated out in tingling waves until every hair on my body prickled and my blood surged. I looked at him, and he stared back at me, both of us out of our depth now.

“Maybe we should head back,” I suggested.

“In a little bit,” he replied. We sheepishly adjusted ourselves until we sat comfortably side-by-side. After a few moments of silence to recuperate I nudged him with my shoulder. 

“Tomorrow’s the last day. There’s word floating around that the coaches’ll treat us to a barbecue like last year.”

“Yeah. I found out earlier today when Akaashi overheard them talking,” he said, and I scoffed. Of course Koutarou would be the first to know.

“Who’s that?” 

“Our new setter! He has the best tosses!” He curled his fingers into a fist and unshuttered an 1000 watt smile directly at me. It was only natural for my heart to give a little squeeze of envy, but it passed quickly. Koutarou gushed about everyone on his team, so it was only natural for him to crank up the praise for someone who positively impacted his ability to spike balls.

“Hopefully he can manage to keep up with your demands.”

“Well, he’s super awesome so far,” Koutarou said, beginning to prattle about the setter and their chances for qualifying for the interhigh — which were 120% in his estimation. He stood up and stretched out his hand to me. I took it and he yanked me to my feet, then led me down the steps to the heavy metal door that opened into the empty school. He paused with my hand in his.

“Can I get one more?”

“One more what?” I teased. Confusion, then surprise and laughter, rippled across his face. I earned the punch he gave me and reeled back in mock pain, clutching my shoulder. “How can I go on playing now? My shoulder is integral to my supreme blocking strategies!”

“I should have aimed higher, then.”

“Oh yeah, there’s nothing up here,” I grinned and tapped my temple with a finger. He snorted out another string of giggles.

“Come on, dude. Just kiss me!”

“Fine! Where should I? How about your ear?”

“N-no!” His genuine shock broke me, and it took every shred of my willpower not to fall on the floor laughing. I doubled over, making ugly noises until tears welled up in my eyes. In the moment it took to me sober up he had slouched into a pout, and looked about ready to leave.

“Okay, okay... I’m sorry. I was kidding, you know.”

“I know.”

“I’m not really good at this kind of thing,” I admitted, hoping a little candor would shake his funk.

“Could’ve fooled me,” he muttered.

I exhaled, then wiped my hands on my t-shirt before taking his and pulling him closer. We kissed one last time and his smile returned, spread across my lips, leaving my head swimming and ears pounding and heart aching for more. I was giddy as we pushed open the door together and parted, heading back to our separate dorms. The way he’d said my name stuck with me all night.


End file.
